FAQs » Functionality¶
WordPress Functionality¶
Pages? Posts? Presentation Page?¶
TE PA NI MA
Apparently you're not accustomed to WordPress' structure, so lets take this from the beginning…
Posts, pages, presentation page¶
WordPress allows you to display various… let's call them areas, or sections. In a particular area/section, you can display one (static) page, one post or a lists of posts – a category (or archive). The pages and posts are the content you write/edit.
Also, the menu items (created automatically by WordPress or manually added by you) link to these areas/sections.
What visitors see when they get to your http://domain.tld/ site is the homepage. That's just a particular area/section. WordPress lets you configure this to display either a list of posts (the default) or a page by using the Frontpage option in the Settings » Reading section. The theme adds one more (invisible) feature here, allowing the display of the presentation page (not actually a page in the WordPress sense but a special theme area/section).
As plain obvious as this sounds – you can only set one of these to be the homepage at one time. Your visitors will only see one homepage, what you configured it to be:
- the list of posts,
- the (static) page, or
- the theme’s presentation page.
Note however that the theme's presentation page will only replace the list of posts (blog) homepage when enable and never a static page.
If you set the theme to display the presentation page on the homepage, obviously, the list of posts will not be visible anymore, but the presentation page itself includes a list of posts below its specific content (which can be turned on/off in the theme settings).
If you don't want to display posts on the homepage at all but want them in another section, the theme takes care of this by providing another feature (described in the FAQs) with which you can create a page (note the term) which will list posts. This is not the actual list of posts (blog) used by WordPress on its default homepage but rather a duplicate provided by the theme.
Aranging the menu items¶
Now, to get to all these pages, posts or homepage a visitor (or you) would need to know the actual links... and this would be crazy.
This is where custom menus come in. WordPress will automatically list all your pages in its main menu by default. But at many times this is not preferred or desired.
Using a custom menu{target=blank} you can add whichever _items (buttons/links/elements) you want in your menu, each of those items linking to one area/section (page, post, category or some other form of content) or external URL.
Now, as a custom case scenario, you’d probably want one an item (button/link/element) to point to your homepage (which in this particular case is set to be the presentation page), one to point to your lists of posts (blog) custom page, and perhaps others to link to other pages.
And depending on what content you add to your presentation page, the homepage will also point to various posts and pages around the site... (or none at all)
Best way for you to get accustomed to all this is to first use WordPress' built-in functionality (and leave the presentation page disabled). Once you learn how various changes/edits you make in the backend affect the site's frontend, you can move on to using the theme's more powerful options.
How do I disable comment forms altogether?¶
TE PA NI MA
We made a small tutorial about comments here.
How do I re-order / rename / re-arrange my menu items?¶
TE PA NI MA
To (absolutely) control your menu and menu items, we recommend using a custom menu.
We wrote a small tutorial on using custom menus, available here.
Translations? Multilanguage?¶
TE PA NI MA
The theme is translation ready. This means it supports WordPress' built-in translations functionality, allowing you to translate it into your own language without editing a single theme file. If someone was kind enough to send us a translation in your language, you may be lucky to find it already there. Otherwise see our how to translate tutorials, part I & part III.
Multilanguage is a different notion. It means your site will have its content in several languages at once, being accessible to readers of various native languages. A theme doesn't need to support multilanguage content since this is not its job. This functionality is provided in WordPress by additional plugins. The theme should be compatible with most multi-language plugins, however only some plugins are capable of translating the theme's presentation page special fields:
- qTranslate – using the quick tags feature. For example, in an input field use the specific syntax to input translations:
[:en]English Text[:de]Deutsch Textor<!--:en-->Hello<!--:--><!--:es-->Hola<!--:--> - Polylang1 – using the strings translations feature.
- WPML1 – using the strings translations feature.
1 since Parabola 1.5.0 / Tempera 1.3.0 / Nirvana 1.1.0
Info
If you find other plugins capable of supporting multi-language translations of the presentation page fields, do let us know.
Something in my dashboard is not working (outside of theme settings)¶
TE PA NI MA
Plugins and (active) themes can interfere with everything in the dashboard as well as site functionality, including each other.
Recently themes are better checked when approved (or updated) but there are plugins that wreak havoc in a dashboard and yet they are in the repository. One can assume they got there before better checking rules were implemented. However even now plugins have a lot more freedom to add functionality, but also break existing functionality.
Whenever having issues in a dashboard, try to get WordPress down to the cleanest version (by deactivating everything you can), and then slowly build your way back to the desired functionality, checking for the reappearance of the issue(s) after every extension activation.
Theme Functionality¶
I cannot change the layout in the Theme Settings?¶
TE PA NI MA
First make sure you are using the latest WordPress and theme version. If that doesn't solve it, try a different browser (perhaps you're using Internet Explorer?).
If nothing works, a plugin could be the culprit.
How do I use a different font than the ones that are available with the theme?¶
TE PA NI MA
If you need any other fonts beside what the theme and Google Fonts offer, you'll have to do it yourself by editing files or using plugins.
How do I remove the paragraph indent?¶
TE PA NI MA
The theme has an option for this.
My post titles and headings have extra padding or spacing. How do I remove that?¶
TE PA NI MA
The theme has an option for this.
I want to disable a background colour / What happens if I delete the colour code inside a colour input field?¶
TE PA NI MA
If it is a background color field – that area will become transparent. If it is a text color field – the default color for that text will be used (either browser default or inherited from container element).
How do I hide page titles?¶
TE PA NI MA
The theme has an option for this.
How do I hide the "Comments are closed" or the "Comments off" texts?¶
TE PA NI MA
The theme has options for these.
How do I hide the text under the comment form?¶
TE PA NI MA
The theme has an option for this.
How do I disable displaying posts on the presentation page?¶
TE PA NI MA
The theme has an option for this.
How do I use an image for the site header and also hide the site title & description?¶
TE PA NI MA
You can set the site header via the Appearance » Header dashboard section. Just make sure your image is the proper size, otherwise it will be cropped or distorted.
The Site Header option under theme's Header Settings allows you to chose between the classic Site title and description, the custom Site Logo (which you can upload separately from the background header image), the Clickable header image and the basic Empty (nothing at all).
If you do wish to hide the previously filled in site title and tagline from the site header area, just set the option to anything but Site title and description – logo (if you have one), clickable header (if you've set a header image) or empty will all do.
How do I make the site’s header image clickable and link to the homepage?¶
TE PA NI MA
You need to set the Site Header option to Clickable header image in the theme's settings.
How do I set my own favicon?¶
TE PA NI MA
You can upload and use your own custom favicon. There's an option for this in the theme's Header Settings.
Additionally, WordPress provides such a feature in its own options in the Customize panel.
Make sure you take into account browsers' limitations concerning filetypes and caching (most browsers won't display a changed favicon instantly).
Can I edit the style.css file to my linking?¶
TE PA NI MA
You can but you shouldn't – all theme files are replaced on update (any extra files are removed). You should place simple custom CSS in the theme's Custom CSS input field in the settings or use WordPress' Additional CSS field (in the Customize interface).
For heavy modifications, consider using a child theme.
How do I set different layouts / sidebars on different pages/posts/categories?¶
TE PA NI MA
The theme has a specific way of controlling sidebars:
- the Layout option in the theme settings sets the general layout structure for the entire site (this applies to all sections, including categories, homepage, specific post, page, tag, archive, author, so on.); the layout option provides 6 layouts:
- one column, no sidebars – will display only the content area
- two columns, sidebar on the left – will display content plus the left sidebar
- two columns, sidebar on the right – will display content plus the right sidebar
- two columns, sidebars on the left – will display content plus both sidebars on the left
- three columns, sidebars on the right – will display content plus both sidebars on the right
- three columns, sided – will display content plus a sidebar on each side of the content
- the general layout option should be set to the layout most (all) of the categories/posts should use
- each page can use a separate layout structure, by using a specific page template for that page; the available options are the same as the ones available for the general layout option; when creating/editing a page select the desired page template from the page templates list on the right to make that particular page look differently than the general layout.
Info
The presentation page does not display sidebars.
There is no way to set specific categories / posts / tags / author / archives to use a different layout than the general one.
How do I add more than 5 slides on the presentation page?¶
TE PA NI MA
You can define up to 5 custom slides, but you can also set the slider to grab the slides from:
- latests X posts
- X random posts
- latest X sticky posts
- latest X posts from category
- random X posts from category
- specific posts (by ID)
where X is a configurable count.
To make slider compatible posts it is required to add a post featured image (which will be used as the slide image). Make sure the featured images are of proper size (the same one as the slider is configured). The post title and post excerpt will be used for the slide caption if defined.
To display more than 5 slides that are not post-based, you can switch the theme to call a third party shortcode in its slider section.
How do I use both the presentation page and the blog page?¶
TE PA NI MA
To use both the theme's Presentation Page and the blog page (like the default WordPress homepage) start by enabling the Presentation Page in the theme's settings (if it is not), and setting your WordPress' Reading settings to Latest Posts.
Then create a new empty page and choose Blog Template (Posts Page) as this page's template. Save and this page will now display your blog posts list. You can also add this page to your menu.
How do I add my own styling/CSS? What is that "custom CSS" you're talking about?¶
TE PA NI MA
We recommend to never modify the theme's style.css file, as you will lose any changes you make to it at the next update (or you are forced to never update, losing out on all the bugfixes, improvements, features and new bugs added :-) )
You could of course use a dedicated custom CSS plugin{target=blank} or even a child theme, but for short / simple CSS customizations we have created a special input field right in theme's settings page. You'll find it by going to _Appearance > Theme Settings, then expanding the Miscellaneous Section by clicking on it. The Custom CSS field is a bit further down.
As an extra feature, you can also type in your own custom JavaScript code (like Google Analytics or other JS you need to load in your header) into the field right below, titled Custom JavaScript.
If you don't know what CSS is, we recommend starting here.
Warning
Make sure the inserted JavaScript code is valid, as using erroneous code may break other things on the frontend.
I want to add my own HTML to the presentation page / Why is my custom HTML stripped?¶
TE PA MA
The theme uses WordPress' built-in sanitation function to strip potentially harmful HTML data. Each field in the settings uses the wp_kses_data() function to sanitize user inputed content. (WordPress Codex has a good explanation concerning sanitation usage)
This is required for the theme to achieve approval by the WordPress theme reviewing team.
For a list of (default) accepted HTML tags and attributes, see the header of WordPress' kses.php file.
This default behaviour can be overridden using plugins, theme code or WordPress modding.
As far as modding the theme is concerned, you can edit the theme/admin/sanitize.php file and inside the [..]_options_validate() function you can remove the wp_kses_data() processing on every field you wish to remove the sanitation from (the field names are pretty much self explanatory).
Danger
Keep in mind these changes can affect your WordPress security.
The presentation page columns and the 2 text areas below support shortcodes. The two titles above and below the slider do not.
These instructions do not apply to Nirvana, which uses different code.
My site is missing all/most of the colours / My site lost colours after modifying theme settings¶
TE PA NI MA
This is most likely caused by a poorly written plugin that is loading its functionality on top of the theme's settings page. First off, navigate and click on one of the theme's colour fields – notice if two colour selectors pop up instead of one. If the answer is yes, then you will need to figure out the problematic plugin (by switching all plugins on/off) and disable it. Secondly, check that all the colour fields have the leading #. If not, add it back where is missing and save settings. If the # sign is removed after the save, this may also be caused by a plugin. Switch all plugins off/on to check for the culprit and disable it.
How can I center my menu?¶
TE PA NI MA
The theme has an option for this.
How do I add another social icon?¶
TE PA NI MA
See the theme specific FAQs for information.
How can I make the menu fixed?¶
TE PA NI MA
The theme does not include such functionality, but you can use a plugin like myStickyMenu for it. Use #access as the menu element identifier in the plugin.
Twitter/Google/Facebook/insert-social-service-here does not grab or grabs incorrect images from my site¶
TE PA NI MA
Are you using one of our themes and Twitter/Google+/Facebook/insert-social-site-here grab the wrong featured image from your site (or don’t grab an image at all)?
Most social services use something called OpenGraph to grab content from your site. This is how they know to read the correct title, text and featured image from your posts. And when they don't find this data they try to parse the source of your site and grab whatever they believe is relevant (such as the first image, even when it may not be relevant to the actual post).
We've considered adding code in the themes for serving OpenGraph data, but this is a grey area as far as WordPress rules are concerned. To receive approval into the WordPress directory, among other things a theme should NOT integrate plugin functionality.
Fortunately, this functionality is already included in existing plugins, one of which we found to work perfectly with our themes – WordPress SEO by Yoast – which we recommend (even though they pay us no money 😉 )
The themes settings page doesn't work / sections do not open / buttons do not work / "problem with your WordPress jQuery library" message¶
TE PA NI MA
If the settings page is empty and all you see are the Reset and Save buttons (and the boxes on the right), see the next question.
If you see the settings section titles, but they fail to open on click, this means JavaScript is failing in your dashboard (at least on the theme settings page).
Start by making sure you are using the latest WordPress and theme versions.
If that is true, then this issue is usually caused by a poorly written plugin that loads its resources over the entire dashboard (instead of only where those are needed) and cause conflicts with scripts used by the theme.
One way to solving this is to use the browser's development tools (most activate them by pressing F12). These tools can be used to look for JavaScript errors (that may point out the exact files that cause the issue, pinpointing the bad plugin).
If this method is complicated or the development tools show no errors (or point to files that cannot cause issues, like WordPress' on script files), then the alternative is to disable all plugins and check if the settings page starts working / returns to working condition.
Then re-enable the used plugins one by one and re-check the theme's settings page until the issue re-appears. That will indicate that the last enabled plugins is the issue.
The only solutions are to either contact the plugin author and nicely ask him/her to correct the behaviour and load plugin resources only where they are needed, stop using the plugin or disable it every time you need to use theme settings. There's nothing we can do about this as a theme cannot affect plugins' functionality.
The theme settings page is all empty except the Reset and Save buttons¶
TE PA NI MA
As we have announced, WordPress 4.4 brought some changes to the settings page HTML structure that interfere with our theme's settings page. Since this change came at the same time Customizer-based options became mandatory for theme updates, we had no solution for fixing this issue with a theme update while at the same time keeping the settings page intact.
So we've devised an alternative solution for older theme versions and implemented it in the settings plugin. To restore the settings page to a functional state, install the Cryout Serious Theme Settings plugin in your WordPress. Once activated, the theme's settings page will return to working condition.
This solution for valid for all our settings-page based themes, the plugin needing to be installed only once no matter which of our themes you use (or switch to in the future)